Section 1.4 Big Problem: Restricting Abortion Access
The Supreme Court's ruling in Row v Wade on January 22, 1973, gave people in the United States legal access to abortion across the United States. The ruling was based on the right to privacy which is protected by the 14th Amendment. Since this ruling, there have been numerous attempts to overturn the Supreme Court's 1973 decision.
These attempts primarily arise when a state passes their own law defining when and how a person can legally get an abortion. When a state passes their own laws, the legality of these laws are often challenged by advocacy groups for access to abortion. These challenges are brought to the court system and can reach as high as the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has the right to decide which cases they will review. Their decision to see a case and/or their decisions in these cases can change accessibility to legal abortion within the United States. This is precisely what happened on June 24, 2022.
In December 2021, the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was argued in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. In this case, the Jackson Women’s Health Organization and one of its doctors challenged that the Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act violated a constitutional right to abortion. This Act states:
"[e]xcept in a medical emergency or in the case of a severe fetal abnormality, a person shall not intentionally or knowingly perform . . . or induce an abortion of an unborn human being if the probable gestational age of the unborn human being has been determined to be greater than fifteen (15) weeks"[Miss. Code Ann. §41–41–191][1.12.5]
Lower courts had ruled the Mississippi Gestational Age Act as unconstitutional because under the 1973 decision on Roe v. Wade, it was prohibited to ban abortions before a fetus was considered to survive outside a woman’s womb.
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court sided with Dobbs, who was the head of the Mississippi Health Department in 2018. This decision is based on the idea that access to abortion is not a constitutional right because, in fact, there is no inherent right to privacy or personal autonomy in the Constitution. Now that precedent has been set that there is no constitutional right to privacy, many other U.S Supreme Court cases are subject to be re-examined that could result in a major set-back to the civil rights movement. These include, but certainly not limited to, legality of same-sex marriages, inter-racial marriages, and contraception.
Immediately following this historical Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe, there were 16 states in which abortion became illegal, banned, or had trigger laws in place [1.12.4]. Trigger laws don’t take effect immediately or require some proactive intervention such as attorney general certification.
While the consequences of overturning Roe remains uncertain, what is not uncertain are people’s beliefs about abortion. A person typically identifies as "pro-choice" or "pro-life". In the following sections, we explore the logic of three topics at the center of people’s beliefs. These topics are bodily autonomy, inequity in abortion access, and when "life" starts.